Hello everyone, and welcome back to my blog! Thank you for choosing to spend your time with me today. In the last two posts, I worked to establish a baseline for where I am currently in physical and mental health. Today we're going to talk about creating and following a physical fitness plan for overall health in mind, body, and spirit!
Lessons From Marathon Training
In 2011, my Uncle Harman Hostetter, who unfortunately just passed away, inspired me to sign up for and run my first marathon. To that time I had never been a long distance runner. I never ran in track or on a school team. I did run occasionally for fitness, but not really anthing regularly. After reading books and researching online, I was able to find a training program that I thought was suitable. That program helped me increase my run distances slowly over 24 weeks. It was successful! After dutifully following my training regimen, I was able to run in and complete my first marathon, the 2011 Grand Canyon Marathon.
From that marathon experience, I learned the value of following a carefully prepared and written training plan. I discovered a real key to breaking down huge tasks, or distances in this case, into smaller pieces, or daily runs. I also found that how I fueled myself by eating the right foods were benefitial to my running performance.
Creating My Personal Physical Fitness Plan for Health and Wellness in Mind, Body, and Spirit
Aligned with my personal physical fitness goals, I have developed a written plan for myself in how I can improve my overal fitness. I'll share that plan here, but want to make sure to include that this plan is mine individually. What works for me may not be suitable for your, and vice versa. Hopefully this will give you an idea of how you can start developing your own plan for improving your individual health in mind, body, and spirit.
The first action was to identify my goals. What specifically was I wanting to achieve through a fitness program? Why was I launching myself off on this journey in the first place? For me there were four specific goals:
1. Improve Overall Fitness
2. Spend More Time Outside
3. Lose weight/body fat
4. Support Long-Term Running Goals
My second action item was to determine what kind of restrictions or mandates that I needed to address in my physical fitness plan. I believe each person is largely his or her own best source of intelligence here, as we all know ourselves and our own past experience, and whether or not to include or exclude a particular element. I wrote down five restrictions to consider when building my plan:
1. I don't want to spend more than 75 minutes of the day working on personal fitness
2. I don't want to have to spend money on specialized equipment
3. I don't want to have to spend any money on a gym membership
4. 5 days per week to exercise with Thursday and Sunday being "rest" days
5. The program has to be simple
Here's a simple spreadsheet that shows my personal physical fitness plan. You'll notice pretty quickly that running makes up the largest share of my plan, with scheduled runs with a specified distance marked for 5 days per week. I will support running with daily calesthenics, which will alternate focusing on upper and lower body work.
Exercise Cannot Fix Eating Badly!
By experience, I know that I cannot exercise my way to fitness. The food that I eat effects all three areas of mind, body, and spirit, to their benefit or detriment! There's an important truth to recognize at the start here, that all of us are as individual in our food needs as we will be in what's best in our physical fitness routine.
Following my approach of "keeping it simple", my eating plan is pretty simple, straight-forward, and mainstream. Written as clearly as possible, my plan is as follows:
The bulk of my diet will be whole grains, legumes, fruits, and vegetables, and will be supported with portion controlled meat, dairy, and eggs. I will restrict sweets and dessert to 1-2 times per week maximum.
As a final "gut check" before I consume something I will ask myself, "is this premium fuel?"
It's impossible for me to talk about healthy eating without bringing up the foundation for my eating plan, and that is "The Word of Wisdom" as found in Doctrine & Covenants Section 89. We received the Word of Wisdom as revelation from God on February 27, 1833. It is essentially a foundation for how we can keep our body, mind, and spirit healthy and clean so that we may receive special blessings of health, intelligence, and protection. I'll leave a link here that you can access and study on your own, and I encourage you to do so!
Something I've learned through over three decades of retail leadership, is that "what we measure improves". With that truth in mind, I plan to complete a physical fitness test every six weeks to gauge my progress. That test will help me measure what is working and what I may need to adjust, so I will be keeping flexible to change.
Thank you again for spending time reading my blog and visiting my website. Please contact me with any advise, stories, or questions you may have.
Until next time...
PEACE!
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